The Wall Street Journal “leaks” that Apple is negotiating with publisher Harper Collins over the rights to market e-books on Apple’s “latest creation“, presumably the iTablet/iSlate.

We say “leaks” because, well, it’s the WSJ and the story credits contributions from someone who’s been getting an awful lot of awfully good Apple information recently. Also, we’ve heard for a while now that Apple has been in talks with traditional print media book, magazine, and newspaper publishers in order to line up content for the iTablet — and presumably the iPhone, iPod touch, and other iTunes connected devices, since that’s Apple’s ecosystem and their forte.

So, on one hand this story serves to firm up expectations that a tablet style device will be announced, and set them as to what one of its new features will be — doing from print media what the iPod did for music (and what has tried to do for movies and TV, despite Hollywood’s myopia). Here’s the crux of it:

Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins, said in December that e-books enhanced with video, author interviews and social-networking applications could command higher retail prices for publishers than current e-books. Many of the country’s largest publishing houses are worried about the sale of new bestsellers for only $9.99 in the e-book format. New releases of enhanced e-books could sell for $14.99 to $19.99, a person familiar with the situation said. HarperCollins is a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Sounds like iTunes LP (for music) and iTunes Extras (for movies) would get an e-book-centric companion, perhaps magazines and newspapers as well. (Though magazines and newspapers traditionally involve subscription services, something Apple, despite the many years of rumors, has yet to offer for music or TV).

What remains to be seen is, if these negotiations pan out, whether Apple will focus on print-media-gone-digital as the killer feature of the new device/service or just one of several (like the iPhone’s wide-screen ipod, internet communicator, phone combo pitch).

[Thanks to @jordanak1 for the head's up!]

It looks as if the rumors of major publishers getting together to agree upon a set of open standards for a new digital storefront are indeed true. Today Apple Insider is reporting that Condé Nast, Hearst, News Corporation, Time Inc., and Meredith all have officially announced this collaboration.

“For the consumer, this digital initiative will provide access to an extraordinary selection of engaging content products, all customized for easy download on the device of their choice, including smartphones, e-readers and laptops,” said Squires, the interim managing director. “Once purchased, this content will be ‘unlocked’ for consumers to enjoy anywhere, anytime, on any platform.”

At first the store will solely be for newspapers and magazines with the possibility of books, comic books, blogs and more in the future. The publishers are now working on a reading application that will allow the reader to get that experience of the specific publications. Hopefully they come up with something that wows us.

How many of you would buy into this digital subscription idea?

[Via AppleInsider]

The iPhone, iPod touch, and still rumorware iTablet (among other mobile platforms) are so compelling that publishers like Condé Nast and now Time Inc. and Hearst are racing to get their slowly dying print media content all prepped and ready for an iPod-like digital savior. Says the New York Observer (via MacRumors) says:

The company would make up one of the biggest alliances among rival publishers ever formed in print media, with Time Inc., Condé Nast and Hearst all expected to join, houses that together publish more than 50 magazines, including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Esquire and O, The Oprah Magazine.

The difference between this and just shipping e-reader content of Kindle-like devices and apps? They don’t want to “pave the cowpath” (TM Fake Steve), they want to try and come up with an innovative way to make their content available that harnesses the power and connectivity of mobile devices, and in a way delightful enough readers will be willing to pay for it.

“With magazines, the form has to change,” [Time exec John Squires] continued. “All I’m saying is that there are ways to design magazines differently for that kind of experience that’ll be attractive and will feel different to a consumer.”

Good luck with that — and we mean it sincerely. We want to be wowed.

Yes, the iTablet rumors just keep on coming, with the latest from Gizmodo being that Apple is in talks with traditional print publishers — text books, newspapers, and magazines, to redefine their industry they way they have music (and are trying to do with video).

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a “new device.” [...] A person close to a VP in textbook publishing mentioned to me in July that McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press are working with Apple to move textbooks to iTunes.[...] Apple also recently had several executives from one of the largest magazine groups at their Cupertino’s campus, where they were asked to present their ideas on the future of publishing.

Why?

The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video, interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static e-ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.

Gizmodo is also backing the rumored January announce date. What remains uncertain is, of course, the market for next generation print media. The Kindle was recently, and very publicly, panned by Princeton students as being unusable. Apple will have the benefit of the existing iTunes and iPhone ecosystem to fall back on, and buy them time — people can browse the web, listen to music, watch videos on the iTablet — but they’ll have to present a much more usable solution to get that print dinosaur cyberized for the next millennium.